April 2025 in Review

 Health & Fitness

I was pretty much back to baseline in April. Since the move, I've been eating perhaps slightly worse than I did living alone. I haven't been drinking bubble teas or Coke floats, but I've been eating more cookies and eating restaurant food more often. Not super often; maybe twice a week? But I think that's more than I'd been doing since Lut passed away.

Oh, and I switched my breakfast food since the move: I've been eating raisin bran or a bagel with smoked salmon for breakfast. Nutrition-wise, pretty similar to the yogurt and granola I'd been having.

I didn't do much formal exercise in April; I counted move-prep and unpacking as exercise instead. I spent lots of time on those, however, and they involved plenty of physical activity, so not wholly unjustified.

Dailies

I quit using my checkbox-based tracking system as the move date grew closer and didn't really get back to it until the end of the month. From April 13 to April 21 is completely blank, and I feel like the dates surrounding those are not particularly accurate. This in turn made me less likely to do all the creative things that I would normally check off. I am trying to get back to it now, although I am feeling less inclined to tell myself to stop doing one creative activity and muster the energy for a different one. For example, on May 1, I spent a few hours on a picture, but I didn't do any writing or editing. On May 2, I spent several hours editing Be That Way, but didn't write any fiction or draw. 

It makes me wonder if I should add some time-based checkboxes (for measuring how much time I spent on creative activities) or if that's gonna make it too unwieldy. I like being able to see what days I did certain activities at all. The spreadsheet is already a little unwieldy, so idk if I want to make it more so.

I have not been good about remembering to check the physical mail here, so I've added a checkbox for that. And am also getting up to do that now, before I forget.

Writing

I wrote a tiny bit of The Secret Dragon. It's up to 39,378, so 2,850 new words. This was more love than the soloRPG romance got: it's at 4,434 and got 1,100 new words. Writing even a little bit of fiction has been a pulling-teeth sort of exercise.

The Business of Writing

I finished initial edits on The Jewel-Strewn Night, but didn't send it to first readers because I gave my first readers until May to finish Be That Way. I guess I can give it to first readers now? I don't know how enthusiastic they'll be when some of them only just finished comments on Be That Way. 

After I finished editing The Jewel-Strewn Night, I started poking at edits on A Game to You. Mostly easy stuff, like replacing placeholders. There are so many placeholder names in this book. Oog.

Art

I checked the "draw" box 7 times in April. I finished the character portrait for Raeku (from Be That Way) that I'd started in March, and revised/cleaned up a character portrait for Caliper (also from Be That Way). With the illustrations for Be That Way finally done, I did a portrait for the villainess soloRPG. I also did two pencil sketches, inspired by finding my small sketchbooks and a Discord friend doing daily sketches in a tiny sketchbook.  

After years of daily art for my Apothecaria journal, this level of art feels like "basically none" in comparison. But it is not zero! I am actually rather pleased to be at not-zero for art. Apothecaria had a lot of instant gratification going for it, and continuing at all without that is an achievement.

Reading

I haven't done much reading. Some big chunks of unfinished manwha, some of a new Time Princess story (A Cat and Dog Affair, which is a weak story paired with a terrible translation: bleh), and a bit more of Feathers of Dawn, which I still haven't given up on even though I'm barely reading it. 

Moving

I am moved! 

This was so much work. I paid people to do everything you can pay people to do except for unpacking (you can pay movers to unpack but it's expensive and doesn't help much so I didn't) and it was still So Much Work. By the end of April, I was down to three boxes left to unpack (I am now at zero). But I don't have enough places to put stuff away, so lots of stuff is littered across the floor of my room and needs to be organized and put somewhere that makes sense. It's progress, though. I'm much closer to the point of "now there's enough space in my room to put some furniture that can hold the stuff that's currently strewn about the floor. Most of the stuff on the floor is in plastic bins so when I finish organizing it, I can stack them. I can get some more stuff into the attic but not all of it.

I have a long list of things Still To Do in connection with having moved. Many require phone calls or going to places of work in person, which explains why I haven't done them yet. None of them are urgent. I will put some of them on the May goal list so I actually do them, though.

Not all of them, though. There's too many of them.

Goal Scorecard

• Move to provide care for my parents: I did the thing! This was the big one.
• Cancel Google Fiber & return equipment: Canceling Google Fiber was so easy -- they let me do it with an email; I didn't even have to fill out an online form or something. Getting the equipment back to them was more challenging: it took three tries for them to get FedEx to email me the necessary QR code, and then I had to take the stuff to the FedEx office and deal with people. But still, pretty easy.
• Contact realtor about selling house: Done! I have some regrets about going through a realtor instead of just selling to some terrible private equity firm for 70% of the value, since the only offers I've gotten in the two weeks it's been on the market have been from terrible private equity firms for 60%-75% of the value. But eh. I'll stick it out for a month or two before I give up and take a crappy offer from a crappy company. 
• Pay April bills: done!
• Pay taxes and file extension: done! I still have to file the actual return, but that's not urgent.
• Complete form for Terry's executor: I had to print out a piece of paper to fill out and sign for the executor of the estate, but Kage got it printed for me. I know a person with a working printer! That'll be convenient for the 1-2 times a year that I need to print something.

April stretch goals completed

• Finish initial edits on The Jewel-Strewn Night: Oh hey I did this and it was actually a significant accomplishment. 
• Write some of The Secret Dragon: Technically!
• Play more of romance soloRPG: Even more technically!
• Finish illustrations for Be That Way: Done!
• Track what I read: I didn't finish reading anything, but hey, I tracked it all.
• Make progress clearing out stuff I no longer want: So much progress. o_o I still have many things I don't have much use for and some things I don't particularly want. But it's pruned down by so much. I got rid of more than two-thirds of my possessions during the move. Maybe as much as 90%, counting the furniture and things Lut had owned. (I kept quite a few things of Lut's: all the game-related stuff, his computer, the painting desk, etc. But I gave away far more, just counting the books and clothing.)
• Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed: Actually did this!
• Get new health insurance for new state: This was a "do within 60 days of move" task but I figured it'd be better to do it soonr, since I get health insurance through healthcare.gov and no telling how long the government will be functional enough to keep the website operational. -_-
• Notified bank and credit card company of new address: Technically I suppose I should change my address with the utility companies, too, but I'm kind of hoping the house will have sold well before address forwarding runs out. (Utilities for my current home are in my parents' name, of course.) Anyway, I took care of this with the two companies that I plan to keep doing business with.

May Goals 

• Provide care for parents: So far, this has been somewhat less than Lut needed. My father has a home health aide three times a week for bathing and a few other things, but my parents are still pretty self-sufficient about daily activities. My dad even put away groceries with me when they arrived today, and probably could've handled them all if he'd had to. (Usually they get grocery delivery while the aide is here but my brother forgot to schedule it). My mom likes to walk with me both for company and security in case of a fall, and to have me pick up food from places that don't have drive-throughs. Both my parents can use someone to transport them to and from appointments. But I feel more like a security blanket than a daily necessity, which is nice.
• Pay May bills
• Call Ting to cancel second phone line: yes I'm finally putting this on the goal list. I don't even know where Lut's old phone is now, much less get any use out of it.
• Complete at least 50% of final edits on Be That Way: This is perhaps optimistic when I haven't finished going through reader feedback yet. But I don't think I'll make any complicated sturctural changes to Be That Way.
• Register with the HOA (bonus goal: find out HOA's approval process for a catio): I've been thinking I'd need to call to do this and ugh, phone calls. But I checked the HOA's contact page and they have an online form to send email. So I completed that just now. We'll see if it gets me anywhere.
• Attempt to get DMV appointment for license transfer: This means being awake at midnight on Sunday and remembering to check the DMV site. I usually manage the "awake" part but have not yet managed the "remembering" part. We'll see if I do any better this Sunday. I'm getting together with Sophrani, Kage, and Envoy on Sunday afternoon/evening so I'm not counting on being awake and remembering it while at a computer.

May Stretch Goals

• Write some of The Secret Dragon
• Finish edits on Be That Way
• Publish Be That Way
• Play more of romance soloRPG
• Exercise 15+ times (organizing stuff/cleaning counts as exercise)
• Track what I read
• Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed
• Ask Bookbub for a Featured Deal and run another ad campaign for a book
• Get backmatter updated for whatever book I promote
• Pick an old picture to redraw
• Sell mom's car
• Register car in new state (or start process thereof)

April 29-May 3

 Tuesday, April 29

A Discord friend, Pemaladesi, has been doing daily sketches in a tiny sketchbook. I have two tiny sketchbooks myself (art-card sized ones, plus art cards, plus a small sketchbook (6" x 6"). The 6" sketchbooks were ones I used all the time many years ago, back before Lut was dianosed with cancer and when I still liked Twitter. I used to bike to the coffee shop with my marker case, take prompts from my Twitter friends, make marker illustrations to the prompts, and post photos of them to Twitter. I filled most of two sketchbooks doing this. I don't remember if there was a particular reason I stopped or if I just moved on to other pastimes. 

After a little consideration, I picked the 6" sketchbook that still had some blank pages. Then I browsed the image search results for Mucha, picked one at random, and make a sketch based on it. I didn't like the sketch enough to color it, though.

Tuesday is too long ago now and I don't remember what else I did with the day.  I started using my checkbox tracker again and checked every box, though. I did some editing on A Game to You and wrote a little of The Secret Dragon. 

I also unpacked more boxes. I was into single-digits of boxes remaining to unpack and that was exciting.

Wednesday, April 30

Another "Blue Prince" stream by Veo! They only got through two days this time. The first day of ths stream was slowed down by spending twenty minutes messing with the time-locked safe. They got it open, though!

More unpacking. Also, like Tuesday, spent some time editing A Game to You and writing The Secret Dragon. I also decided to try another Mucha-inspired sketch. This time, I modeled my female figure on Koysko, a protagonist from The Secret Dragon. I liked how this sketch came out, but didn't start coloring it yet.

I bought the rest of "You've Got the Wrong Girl!", a manwha on Tapas, and immediately regretted it. In the very next entry the male lead tortured and then killed a servant because the servant had withheld the ML's correspondence by the orders of the ML's now-deceased father. 

Just. What. Why is this in a romance comic. The problem with reading manwha is that the authors have Very Different sensibilities and sometimes this will show up in horrific ways.

I kept reading because I'd already paid for it, but even aside from Random Offhand Murder, the ML's behavior is incredibly grating. I had really liked this comic and now I've got seven purchased-but-unread episodes left and I'm not sure they're worth reading.

Thursday, May 1

In the morning, Sue, my dad's health aide, reported that my father's right hearing aid wouldn't fit back in his ear properly. It looked to me like it had been assembled wrong -- it matched the configuration on the left hearing aid. But I couldn't figure out another way to reassemble it. After some back and forth with my mother and Google maps, we figured out which audiologist he used, and I gave them a call.

Receptionist: "Your dad's audiologist is on vacation, so the first appointment availaible is Wednesday."

Me: "Can we get in any sooner? It doesn't have to be the usual audiologist; it's a mechanical problem with the hearing aid, not with my dad's hearing or the electronics."

Receptionist: "Not at that location."

The other location was much farther away. I asked Dad if he wanted a sooner appointment with a much longer drive, or to wait until Wednesday. He picked waiting until Wednesday.

 

Sue took the hearing aid from him and told him she'd put it on the charger. To my mom and I, she said, "It won't stay in, so if he keeps trying to wear it, it'll fall out and he'll lose it."

A bit later, I washed the comforter I use at my computer. (Some people like to have a small lap blanket when they're sitting. I like to have a king-size comforter.) My mother has a fancy dryer that tries to detect when the contents are dry, then turns itself off. It is not great at this. With the comforter, it turned itself off when 80% of the comforter was dry but the balled-up center was still wet.  I straightened out the ball, put the wet parts on the outside, and put it back in the dryer for another cycle. The dryer told me it would run for another ~81 minutes. 

3 minutes later, it shut off. 

I checked the comforter: still giant wet spots. I put it back in. Dryer: "okay 81 minutes, go."

3 minutes later: "done now!"

Comforter: still wet.

Me: "..."

Me *goes into mom's office* "Is there a way to get your dryer to just, like, dry something for a while instead of turning itself off while the thing is still wet because for some reason it's sure it must be dry?" 

Mom: "If there is, I haven't been able to find it."

I fiddled with the settings some more, trying "Very Dry" instead of "Normal Dry", with no better results. But "Timed Dry" turned off the auto-detection and just ran it for X minutes. I put it in for another hour Just To Be Sure, and also because I had to go visit my friends.

As with last week, I visited Sophrani to do crafting together in the afternoon, and then got dinner with her and Kage afterwards. I brought my ginormous marker case, plus the Surface and my small sketchbook. Sophrani did Delicious Crafting for her part, making a half-batch of chocolate chip cookies. She'd seen an article that recommended adding milk powder to the cookie batter and wanted to try it out. The cookies were delicious, but Sophrani and I couldn't tell if milk powder had made them extra delicious. Kage thought it did, though. I may make a more scientific effort at this at some point, and make a batch that's half with and half without milk powder. 

While Sophrani baked, I colored the sketch I'd done on Wednesday. I am content with the way it came out but for some reason I haven't bothered photographing it yet.

We went to The Loop for dinner, a counter-serve place with pizza/sandwiches/burgers. I got a veggie sandwich that was quite tasty and possibly even healthy, and French onion soup that was also delicious but definitely not healthy.

After dinner, we went to Trader Joe's. I don't think we plan to make "grocery shopping after dinner" part of the routine. It just worked out that way. I got maple syrup, truffles, goat cheese, and eggs. Eggs because we were almost out but I'd forgotten to include them on Friday's grocery order. 

The truffles are small dollops of chocolate ganache dusted in cocoa. The appearance on the box reminded me of truffles I used to get from Costco around Christmas time. They taste the same, too: so good. This is a mixed blessing at best. o_o;;;

Friday, May 2

I got up a little before 8AM and made pancakes for myself and my father (Mom didn't want any), so I'd have an excuse to eat the maple syrup I'd bought the night before. For some reason, there's no baking soda in the house, and my usual pancake recipe uses both baking powder and baking soda for whatever reason. But we had some Bisquick from when my sister-in-law had made shortcake, so I made Bisquick pancakes, substituting melted butter for vegetable oil because we didn't have that, either.

The Bisquick pancakes came out perfectly. It was uncanny. Fluffy and golden brown. I was like "why do I bother making pancakes from scratch? I should just use Bisquick." (Now I feel like an advertisement. They really did come out great, tho.)

I finished making pancakes and went upstairs to eat them while I waited for Veo's stream to start. This was more of "Blue Prince". I had a good time watching the stream and making notes in my spreadsheet for most of it, but around 90 minutes in, I started getting motion sick for some reason. I listened to the stream and watched chat for a while instead. My mom wanted to get subs for lunch, so I picked something to order and my mother placed the order. Around 11AM, I left to pick up the order. The stream hadn't ended yet, but I didn't miss much -- it ended a bit after 11AM. Blue Prince streams continue to run late, but not 3.6 hours like Monday's stream. 

My mom had accidentally order a full sub for me instead of a small. I ate half of it for lunch and put the rest in the fridge. After lunch, I really wanted a nap, but we had grocery delivery scheduled for 1-3PM, so I had to stay awake for that. I unpacked the last box, which was mostly cosplay clothing and fabric. I threw out a bunch of things that didn't fit anymore, and put much of the rest in the wash because it was musty from a long time in storage. 

A little after 2PM, I'd finished with the last box and went upstairs. Shortly afterwards, I heard my father call, "Come in." I hurried back downstairs to get the grocery order. I was kind of impressed that the delivery person had somehow made enough noise to get the attention of my mostly-deaf father without either ringing the doorbell or making enough noise that either I or my mother could hear it (granted, we were both much farther from the door than my dad. Still.) The delivery person had the bags on the front porch. While I collected some, she carefully moved the rest just inside the door, positioned so the door couldn't be closed. I am not sure exactly what the point of that was. Fortunately, Lyric was enjoying Garage Time and so did not take the opportunity to bolt outside.

One case of caffeine-free diet Coke was soggy, so I dealt with that first. Two of the cans inside were damaged and leaking, so I threw them out along with wet cardboard box. While I handled that, my father loaded groceries onto the seat of his rolling walker, and brought groceries into the kitchen. "You don't need to do that, Dad," I said to him. "I'll handle it."

My dad said, "I thought I'd take advantage of my wheelbarrow here to help out."

As we put away groceries, my father mentioned that the grocery webpage had a habit of adding things to the shopping cart because you'd bought them before and it assumed you would want them again. So you had to check the cart to make sure the thing you wanted wasn't already in the cart.

I giggled. "I don't know if the page still does this, because at this point, I'm ordering for myself, and K is putting in what Sue orders for you, and Mom either emails K or adds things to the cart directly. So there's no way to tell if the grocery did it or if one of the other two people ordering did."

My father's observation may have been prompted by me ordering two packages of smoked salmon despite there already being a full package in the fridge (plus an almost-empty one). I'd thought we only had the almost-empty one and I was thinking of buying fresh bagels and eating some this week. Now I really have to get bagels. (My father eats plain grocery-store bagels but I'd much rather eat fancy ones from a bagel place.) 

After putting away the groceries, I moved laundry into the dryer and went back upstairs. In addition to being bad at detecting when things are dry, it is terrible at estimating how long the dry cycle will take. It told me 38 minutes when I started the cycle. I came down ~40 minutes later and it now said "9 minutes." I came back half an hour later and it was now at 8 minutes. 

...

I opened up the dryer and took out all the stuff that was already dry, then threw the remaining few items back in for another round. 

Since it was now May, I realized I could start editing Be That Way, so I did that for much of Friday. I spent Coffee's stream in multiplayer with them, sometimes working on edits (and giving myself editing credit to defeat monsters) and other times writing up my April-in-review post.

Saturday, May 3

I haven't done a daily entry since Monday, so I don't know if I'll be able to reconstruct the previous days well enough to write about them. I'll take a crack at it, though.

I woke at 6AM and played with my phone for an hour, but got back to sleep and didn't wake again until 8:40AM, so that was nice. I played some Time Princess and then got up.

I had cereal for breakfast and discovered that the grocery had delivered one box of Raisin Bran Crunch, as requested, and one box of Raisin Bran, as not requested. The difference between the two is that Raisin Bran Crunch stays crispy in milk for several minutes, while Raisin Bran is soggy by the time you get the cap back on the milk. I suppose I'll eat it, though. They also delivered a battered case of soda with two out of twelve cans leaking. I should talk to my parents about changing groceries because the service from Walmart is better and cheaper. They won't go for it but I should at least try instead of silently groaning at their current grocery.

After eating breakfast and playing some Race for the Galaxy, it was 10:30 and I was like "what am I supposed to be doing now?" I didn't have ay plans for today but I felt as if I ought to. It's weird having all the boxes unpacked. I need to try to straighten up the plastic bins and stuff littered about my room. I made a token gesture at doing this today, but made no meaningful progress. I still have a few empty spaces where I could put stuff. I just haven't. I ran out of transparent plastic tubs before I ran out of things I wanted to put in them, though. The biggest pile of random stuff is parts for Lut's computer -- cables and keyboard and whatnot. I don't plan to set up Lut's computer, so that seems like a good bin candidate. But I don't have a free bin for it. I think I'll move some things that are currently in bins into the inaccessible and mostly-unused cabinets in the laundry room. (The top shelves are not only high but you have to reach over the laundry machines to get to them. I put some stuff in them but not much because I need to get the stepladder out to reach them.) 

It'd be a good place to store the king-size mattress pad until I get a new bed. Though it's so large and fluffy, it fills up a bin by itself; it might be too big for the cabinets. Also, I'm not sure if I'll end up using it; after 20+ years of having a California king mattress, my fitted sheets and mattress pads were all California king, I think. And I doubt I'll get a new California king bed. I don't need the extra length. Not that I need the extra width when it's just me, either. But I plan to get a king-size bed anyway. It's just the normal bed size for one person. All the other sizes are too small. I guess they're for kids or something, idk?

I am presently sleeping on a twin and it literally is uncomfortably small. Even with my weird O-shaped pillow to keep me centered in the bed (and to make sure I can't knock my side pillows off the bed), I keep draping over the side or having my arm pressed against the wall. And I'm not a large person! I know so many people who are fine with sleeping in twins but I am not one of them.

Anyway, instead of organizing my possessions, I went through first-reader feedback on Be That Way. I've been reading through comments and making changes when a comment prompted a quick alteration. With comments that need more consideration to implement, I make a note on the editing list and move on. I am a little over a third through and the editing list is at seven points so far. Looking very manageable.

At 2PM, I asked my mother is she wanted a walk; she declined. I thought about napping, but went back to editing instead. I didn't lie down until 3:30PM and didn't try to sleep until after 4PM. I napped for maybe 40 minutes: short for me, but I had done a pretty good job of sleeping the night before, so maybe I just really didn't need a nap.

After I finished eating dinner, I went to CoffeeQuills' stream page a bit after 6PM to wait for it to start, only to find it already running, to my surprise. It'd only been up for 90 seconds; it was very early for Coffee (7AM in Japan). They had plans with their partners and would be heading out at 10AM their time, so they'd started stream early. I hopped into multiplayer with them, and started writing this entry.